Reassessing Heritage

SCDA Architects' renovation of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry building improves functionality and formalises history.

- Luo Jingmei

Among the hodgepodge of architectural styles along Hill Street, the home of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) has a seminal presence due to its iconic architecture. The main entrance features elements of traditional Chinese architecture such as a hip roof covered with green glazed tiles, crimson columns, beams adorned with colourful graphics and a studded red door flanked by ceramic carvings of nine Chinese dragons on each side. The building behind is capped by similar components, albeit at a grander scale with a doubletiered pyramid roof, emphasised by a column of balconies rising up its mien.

In 1906, the elite of the Chinese business community established the SCCCI to promote trade and industry. The original home was a two-storey structure – the former mansion of Wee Ah Hood, a tycoon who made his fortune from gambier and pepper trading in the mid-1800s. In 1963, this was replaced by the current 10-storey building. Six years ago, SCDA Architects was tasked to rejuvenate the architecture and interior, which it completed in 2022.

“As the community of SCCCI members grows and as the Chamber’s role evolves and expands both locally and globally, a thorough renewal of the building represents the next step towards the Chamber’s future,” says architect and SCDA Architects’ founder Soo K. Chan. This would need a building symbolising “a ‘harmony of dualities’ – a synthesis of the old and the new, past and future”.